Abstract Merging black holes (BH) are expected to produce remnants with large dimensionless spin parameters (aspin ∼ 0.7). However, gravitational wave (GW) observations with LIGO/Virgo/Kagra (LVK) suggest that merging BH are consistent with modestly positive but not high spin (aspin ∼ 0.2), causing tension with models suggesting that high mass mergers are produced by hierarchical merger channels. Some BH also show evidence for strong in-plane spin components. Here we point out that spin down of BH due to eccentric prograde post-merger orbits within the gas of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) disk can yield BH with masses in the upper mass gap, but only modestly positive aspin, and thus observations of BH with low spin do not rule out hierarchical models. We also point out that the fraction of BBH mergers with significant in-plane spin components is a strong test of interactions between disk binary black holes (BBH) and nuclear spheroid orbiters. Spin magnitude and spin tilt constraints from LVK observations of BBH are an excellent test of dynamics of black holes in AGN disks, disk properties and the nuclear clusters interacting with AGN.